Hi,
Most of you might not care about music packs, but my pack "Northern Winds" was just added to the game the other day. Having played Dota 2 since the beta myself, it's surreal to be able to play the game I love with music I composed myself.
As a frequent lurker here on reddit, I know it's been up on the frontpage several times, and I want to thank you guys for that amazing support!
Valve specifically mentioned Reddit when reaching out to me, which is quite awesome. YOU DID IT!

How did you even made it? in tl:dr. its sounds like it was played by a fucking orchestra, i cant imagine amount of work you put in into this, its the most awesome music pack that has been added in a while. i cant afford it now, and not gonna ask for it but keep it up man.

First off, thank you very much!
I do not have any real orchestra nor do I record any instruments by myself, it's all created digitally in my computer, with the help of my keyboard. I use a software called Cubase, which is basically the foundation for everything I do. There are a lot of programs that do pretty much the same thing as Cubase (Logic, Reaper, Ableton Live, Pro Tools, FL Studio etc), and they're usually refered to as DAWs/Hosts/Sequencers. Though, among all these I personally prefer Cubase. In this program, I write all the notes & hits for the different instruments.
Then I have a dozen other programs that I "host" in Cubase. What I mean, is that these programs work together with Cubase, so I can open them within Cubase. These programs simulate the sound of the actual instruments that I want to use, and I work with them to create a realistic sound. There are loads of options for these programs, and they're usually referred to as "Virtual Instruments" (VIs in short). These programs have a load of recorded sound-samples from the different instruments, which they use to create the sound of an instrument being played. If you want it to sound good, you'll have to spend quite a lot of time fiddling with different settings and stuff, but in the end, it does sound quite real! Though, nothing beats a real orchestra, as they can be a lot more emotive in their playing. :) The Virtual Instruments I have used for this music pack are:EastWest Symphonic Orchestra (Full orchestra)CineStrings Core (Orchestral strings, better software than the above mentioned, but only includes strings)EastWest Symphonic Choirs (Orchestral choirs & solo singers)Quantum Leap StormDrum 2 Pro (Loads of various percussion)Quantum Leap Ra (Ethnic instruments for around the world)Quantum Leap Pianos (4 different pianos)Quantum Leap Voices of Passion (Ethnic solo vocals)Omnisphere 2 (Synth software to create all types of crazy sounds, haha)Quantum Leap Spaces (Software to emulate the sound reflections from different halls, to bring my instruments "into" an orchestral hall)

I then also recorded some random sounds like two glasses being hit against eachother, my piano being closed hard etc, and then tweaked these sounds to great some cool effects to use. :)

Hope this gives you a little bit of an understanding how it's done! It's quite hard to describe all in one, but I tried to keep it quite simple. You can check out www.soundsonline.com, www.cinesamples.com aswell as www.spectrasonics.net if you want to learn more about the virtual instruments I use, and how they function! Don't hesitate to ask if you have any more questions. :)

Haha, I'll try to do it but I can't guarantee anything!
And yes, I was partnered with Fnatic and also Dreamhack a few years ago. Started out as a Dota shoutcaster for them, but later started writing music for them instead.

Thank you! It takes a lot of time and tinkering with the settings and different controls to get them to sound emotional, but I'm happy to hear that my effort seems to have paid off. Honestly, the oboe is from quite a old virtual instrument, and there are even better ones available nowadays!

I actually haven't, but honestly, I think they both are great. One might be better at certain aspect while the other is better at others.
I use CineStrings from CineSamples aswell, which is absolutely great. But it also has some downsides. They are all good all in all, but might be suitable for different styles.

What constitutes a good opportunity? What factors need to be present for you to consider it a good decision to make another one? Asking coz I think you're talented af and this pack was objectively good but I wanted something a little different for a Dota music pack.

Having looked at your YouTube page I'm extremely impressed that you are self taught. Many congratulations on this fantastic achievement. I look forward to hearing more of your work and wish you the best of luck. I'm sure you'll have a very successful career in composing for games, TV and film.

I'd love to, but the whole process is very risky for someone who's trying to make a living through music. However, it was really fun to compose for the game I have been playing myself for the last 5 years, so if I see a good opportunity to do it, I would love it. Any specific style you'd be interested in?

It gets quite risky as I'd have to spend a lot of time on it (spent almost 4 months on this in total), and then it might not get added to the game (as /u/19Alexastias mentioned). Another thing is that while working on it, you get no payment at all, so you need to have saved up money in advance to even be able to sustain yourself while composing it, unless you do it at the side while having another job.

Can you plz say how well it's selling? Don't need to give figures (you can PM me if you are confortable), just say something in a scale of "lower than my investiment", "it's paying my investiment", "higher than my investment", "more money than I expected" or "gushing cash", to give us an idea if the music artists are well receive.

It's only been released for a little over a day this far, so hard to say. I didn't really know what to expect, so all I can say is that I'm happy with the sales this far. Though to be honest, I'm just happy it made it into the game - both because I now get something in return for the work, but also because it's quite amazing to have my own soundtrack in the game I've been playing for the last 5 years.

I've been studying since September, but before that I have been working at the side of doing music. I'm very thankful for your concern, but I believe I'll be fine. The music business is obviously very harsh, and I'm aware of that, but I have some backup plans incase!

I think people will have faith in your work after seeing this fantastic pack. I suggest if you have interest in making music packs in the future, hit up reddit with a post about supporting you w/ a Patreon link. You can give people who contributed x dollars your pack when it comes out so there is some sustainability.

That way some of the risk of composing is mitigated. I'm sure people, myself for sure, would be willing to be a Patron since we have seen this music pack and it is quality.

It's absolutely not a bad idea, so I might give this a try if I see a good opportunity to do another pack. Right now I'm studying music, which is taking up most of my time, so it will have to wait for a while.
Thanks for the idea though, I hadn't thought about that myself!

Thanks man and great effort. I purchase all the music packs as I know the hard work and dedication that goes into them. Hope it gives you funding to do another future one, even if it does take a year to get added. Also Make sure you get your cv up to date with this work on it, this could be a stepping stone into working on much bigger projects if you get yourself a good following from the dota community. Don't miss out the chance while you are hot to get as many youtube/spotify/soundcloud/ etc followers. If I had your ability I would be sending in my work to Esports organistaions to come up with themes/intro etc for the competetions/promos. People like ESL are throwing silly money at putting on these events for esports at present. This scene is only heading one way at the moment, up!

Congratulations my friend. As a musician I now how awesome you feel. I'll get your pack to support you as soon as I can. You are an awesome guy for giving it to those you can't get it. You are a great person.

This is correct. :)
Though, most decently budgeted games, tv shows and movies have real instruments and orchestra (for example Dota 2). Nothing beats the real deal!
See my reply to /u/Tommy_Andretti for a more detailed description.

Thank you!
I'm from Sweden myself, so I'd say the scenery and history of the Scandinavian countries was a large part for inspiration. Though, I've been very inspired by certain other soundtracks, such as Skyrim, WoW: WotLK, Vikings (tv series), Game of Thrones and more.

Thank you for answering! It's good to see a lot of composers coming form Sweden/Norway/Germany these days. Have you ever thought about using live instruments and tracking all at once? I know it's a bit costly, because I've done it myself years ago (studio time, engineers, etc). Do you have a favorite instrument that's used? I'm quite fond of my Fender Rhodes for all sorts of stuff.

Absolutely, I'd love to use live instruments! The problem is just the cost really - though I hope to be able to incorporate that in some of my future projects!
When it comes to favorite instruments, I really love the cello and also a Swedish instruments called nyckelharpa (that I'd love to learn to play)!

I was waiting so long for this... bought it instantly. Valve takes its sweet time adding stuff from the workshop.

I tried Dota 2 some time ago and instantly fell in love with the default music. I almost only exclusively buy music packs on Dota nowadays and I'm glad this is out. I'm a fan of soundtracks and I can say this adds a whole new level of atmosphere to my game! I barely listened to it but it's safe to say it's on the top 3 music packs today. Thanks for creating, Mr Boberg

Honestly, when I saw one of the posts here linking that Music Pack, I had to upvote that in Steam Workshop so it would reach in-game, now I can't afford it, just used it on Battle Pass. I hope to buy the music pack someday.

First pack I've bought since new bloom, a very excellent combination of epic and discreet, makes for great ambiance throughout the game without being obnoxious like most of the music packs tend to be. I could see it having been the default music the game shipped with and that is the best quality you can hope for, in my opinion.

its different than others and the best part and while using this in shuffle its standout maybe its new thats why or its really good anyhow i'm enjoying music pack a lot at this time so ty for that and i hope its going to stay like this..

Yes, that is correct. It will function as a soundtrack when you play in game, just like the original soundtrack but with these tracks instead. It's basically an alternative soundtrack - so when you play these tracks will be played depending on the situations in game.

Man, this fucking music pack gave me enough inspiration to win. I pictured my current hero (am) in a Skyrim-like terrain. Snow everwhere, epic shit. I just can't love it enough. Love your music pack, keep the good work!

Thank you!
Honestly, Lord of the Rings isn't a big inspiration for this (even though I love the soundtrack for those movies, and Howard Shore is a big inspiration). But I do have quite a lot of aggressive sounding brass, as well as using fiddles, which is something that is used in LotR as well, so I understand the connection!

Just wanted to say thank-you for the music pack. This is an excellent refresher from the TI5 music pack which has one of the softer undertones your music pack has. I love the amount of music packs we have in this game, and they're all so diverse. You can really switch these up to reflect your mood when you're playing.

There does seem to be an audio looping issue in the hero selection music, is there any way to fix that? If you go into the hero pick phase of the game, once the music has finished playing the audio will clip for a second, it doesn't loop smoothly like the other music packs do.